The UK must do more to fight corruption

It has been estimated that corruption causes up to $1 trillion each year to flow out from developing countries into the rich world. This deprives the countries most in need of valuable revenue and has devastating impacts on their citizens’ quality of life. 

Today is International Anti-Corruption Day and CAFOD have joined with likeminded NGOs through BOND’s anti-corruption working group. We are calling on the UK government to do more to tackle the role that UK banks and companies play in fuelling and facilitating the corruption which can undermine development overseas.

CAFOD has welcomed steps taken by the UK government to date, particularly the implementation of the Bribery Act 2010 and calls on the Government to continue following through with the necessary steps to:

• Ensure there are sufficient dedicated resources available to enforce the Bribery Act
• Enforce UK anti-money laundering laws
• Extend the UN Convention Against Corruption and UK Bribery Act to all Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
• Produce a transparent cross-government anti-corruption strategy under the responsibility of UK Anti-Corruption Champion, Rt Hon Ken Clarke MP. 

A number of other recommendations are made in our full report, such as improving enforcement of know-your-customer rules by banks and other service providers including accountancy firms so that they do not mistakenly handle corrupt money and also the need to better publicise protection promised to whistleblowers to ensure that much more corrupt behaviour comes to light and can be challenged.

Who’s leading the charge against corruption?

Photo of an anti-corruption protest "Enough filth!" at Brazilian Congress by Flickr user The World Wants a Real Deal

A year ago, I wrote a post called “The ‘middle income’ poor and corruption” about campaigns in India and Brazil against corruption. Lessons we learned from campaigns in Brazil, and the unfolding of a dramatic anti-corruption movement in India have me questioning: just who is leading the “charge” against corruption in these middle income giants?

Clearly, the key to sustainable, lasting change in corruption will be strong coalitions between rural and urban people, and across class lines.

Both Indian and Brazilian campaigns have shown how different groups have different interests and favored means of communication, and holding together a lasting coalition of them is no small feat.

“Mashing” traditional civil society and flash mobs

The protest is the hashtag and the hashtag is the protest

The day I arrived in Brazil last month, I learned by word of mouth that students in the northern city of Natal, Brazil had been occupying the city council for over a week.

Their camp was being transmitted live on webcam, emblazoned with the hashtag above.

It all started on May 25, when about a thousand people organized a rally online with the help of a tweet, fed up with alleged corruption by the mayor, demanding her impeachment. A week later a thousand more joined.

A week after that, they set up camp – INSIDE the city council.

Not even super-online friends in São Paulo had heard of it, more than a week after the camp was set up.

Why am I sharing this? Because traditional civil society – the kind of organizations promoting reform and change that we work with – were not the driving force in this organic collective. (Of course, as in Tunisia and Egypt, when the resistance became a social fact, unions and CSOs were keen to link in.)

Does this mean that the old ways of pushing social change are to be discarded? My answer lies in another question: what happens when the campers go home, and when the webcam is turned off?

No one is in favour of bribery, right?

Photo by Kerolic on Flickr

After the measured discussion of last year, 2011 took off with some strong vocal opposition and plenty of negative media coverage on the Bribery Act.

I can’t help think that it is rather strange to have to defend something that should be completely uncontroversial. Surely, no-one is in favour of bribery? It’s interesting that many of the public statements have been comment pieces quoting unnamed businessmen in hypothetical quandaries or statements by business lobbying organisation the CBI saying that the Act is not fit-for-purpose.

Anti-corruption: Parliamentary “wash-up” cleans up British business

The dying days of this parliament have seen the passing of a landmark new law to fight corruption. Yesterday the Bribery Act received Royal Assent during the so called pre-election “wash up” where the parties decide which bills will survive and which will fall. This ends a decade of thwarted attempts to reform our outdated bribery laws.

This is good news for the developing world. We know that bribery and corruption can have a devastating impact on poor countries. The U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre has estimated that 25 percent of African states’ GDP is lost to corruption each year.